Dalton Caldwell
Dalton Caldwell is Managing Director and Group Partner at Y Combinator. Prior to YC, he was the co-founder and CEO of imeem (acquired by MySpace in 2009) and the co-founder and CEO of App.net. During his time at YC, he’s advised more than 35 YC unicorns, including DoorDash, Amplitude, Webflow, and Retool, and has worked across 21 different YC batches. He’s also racked up more than 6,500 office hours with founders.
2 skills 2 insights
Career (separate track) Skills
Startups that succeed are often the ones where founders maintained an irrational commitment to keep going despite multiple near-death experiences.
"There has to be this irrational intention to keep going even when the world tells you it's not working and you feel completely defeated. And you likely have to go through this many times and have thes..."
Strategy & Positioning Skills
A successful pivot moves you closer to your domain expertise and leverages the lessons or internal tools developed during your previous attempt.
"Usually a successful pivot gets warmer instead of colder from what you're an expert at and somehow builds on what you learned on the prior idea. Right? And so in the case of Brex, it was they had work..."